by Ann Charles
The jukebox was playing The Dukes of Hazzard theme song when she walked out from the restroom. Maybe she would dance some first. She watched her cousin go twirling by and her stomach gurgled out a warning at that silly notion after so many drinks.
Or maybe she would shoot some pool. She always played better while tipsy, something to do with being willing to take more risks, probably.
She pin-balled her way through a cluster of dancers over to the busy pool tables, skirting wide around her mother and the old boys so they didn’t try to pull her into their card game. One of the pool players scratched on the eight ball as she closed in on them. Perfect timing. It was as if this were meant to be. Ronnie smiled with a feeling of purpose.
She pulled a bill out of her back pocket and slapped it down on the table edge. “I’ll play the loser next,” she said and then snorted at the irony. She had been playing the loser for over five years. Hell, for most of her life while her mother ran her world.
Correction, make that while Ronnie let her mother run her world. Those days were over, though, and tonight she was going to win, damn it.
The actual loser looked her up and down, his wide face draped with brown bushy hair and sideburns. His even wider smile had a crowd problem with too many teeth jostling together, knocking some of them crooked. Louie was embroidered across his bowling shirt. With arms that seemed to hang longer than normal and hands like giant fleshy pancakes, he looked straight out of a cartoon. The Jungle Book came to mind, making her chuckle under her breath.
“Well, lookee what we have here.” He chalked up his pool stick with those huge hands while his eyes crawled up, down, and inside her tank top. “It must be my lucky day.”
Ronnie plucked a pool stick off the rack and hefted it between her hands, liking the feel of it. “Don’t get too excited there, King Louie.” She half expected the guy to jump up on the table and slap the green felt several times while breaking into a hip jungle beat. “We’re only playing for bananas here. There’ll be no monkeying around.”
“Ah, come on, baby. There’s no fun in that.” His tone seemed friendly enough. His eyes weren’t doing any weird rolling about or twitching, but they were pretty red-rimmed and watery. Judging from the crowd of empty bottles sitting on the closest table, she figured Louie’s own party was well under way.
She just hoped he remained friendly enough or she’d be breaking the pool stick over the big orangutan’s head before the night was over, and then running like hell. She doubted one hit would do more than make him scratch his thick skull.
“Trust me, you don’t want any of this,” she warned him and racked the pool balls. “I’m damaged.”
“You got you some of those vaginal yeast sores, do ya?”
Ronnie stopped racking and blinked across at him. Really? He took “damaged” and turned it into vaginal yeast sores?
“’Cause I’m okay with sores. They don’t slow me down. I just push on through.”
She cringed, her stomach bucking at the picture he had painted. Dear lord, she hoped he had washed his hands after using the restroom last.
“Well, thank you for sharing that, King Louie, but I was talking about emotional damage.” She rolled the cue ball his way, and then held onto the edge of the table while the world tilted for a second before returning to its normal horizontal position. Ugh, there was that gin again. “Are you familiar with what emotions are, you big monkey?”
“More than you know.” He bent over to line up the break shot, but then his lower lip began to quiver. Before Ronnie could fully register what was happening, his whole face convulsed into pain and tears.
“What the …” She came around and patted him on his sweaty back with one of her fingertips, her nose wrinkling at the body odor wafting from his shirt. “I was just kidding around, Louie. Are you okay?”
He rubbed one of his huge pancakes down his wet cheeks. “My girl left me today and she ain’t coming back.”
Ronnie grimaced, feeling like she should give him a hug but not anxious to embrace the hot, smelly ape of a man. She found a dry spot on his back and patted him with her whole palm. “I’m sorry your girlfriend left you, Louie.”
A fresh round of tears filled his red-rimmed eyes. “Not my girlfriend, my baby girl. She got shipped off to boot camp and I miss her already.”
“Oh, Louie. I’m sorry.” She reached her arm around him, ignoring the wet spots, and gave him a half-squeeze. She was going to need more gin to dull her senses if this therapy session continued. “I’m sure she’ll come home.”
“Maybe someday but not for a long time.” He lifted the tail of his shirt and blew his bulbous nose into it.
“Oh, dear,” Ronnie said, hoping he would not come looking for a bigger hug. As much as she wanted to make the big monkey stop crying, she drew the line at snot.
He sniffed and dabbed at his leaky eyes. “Do you mind if I try to call her again and not finish our game?”
“Not at all, Louie. You go and talk to your kid.”
He reached out to hug her and she captured his hand and shook it instead. It was damp and sticky, but she managed not to recoil or let go. “I hope you hear from your daughter soon.”
“Thanks.” He pulled his hand free and leaned his pool stick against the wall. “I hope you get those sores taken care of,” he said a little too loud for her comfort.
She watched him lumber over to the payphone, shaking her head at the crazy play of events tonight, including King Louie. “I hope I get these sores taken care of, too.”
Turning back to her game, she leaned over and took aim at the racked pool balls. A pair of blue jeans filled the background behind them.
“What sores?” Sheriff Harrison asked.
Only he wasn’t dressed like a sheriff. He was missing his official hat and star and everything else tan. The transformation was mesmerizing, especially while her guard was down thanks to the gin buzz. Out of uniform, he looked human—and holy-shit handsome in a rugged, pickup truck commercial sort of way. All he needed was a flannel shirt over his white Henley, all tucked into his well-fitted jeans, and a horse trailer to pull. The white cowboy hat he set on the corner of the table finished his ensemble to perfection.
Shaking off the temporary lust blindness that had hazed her vision for a moment, she searched for sarcasm—her shield of defense. “The emotional sores that I have from constant harassment by a certain local lawman.”
She took her shot, scattering the balls around the table, dropping the three ball in the pocket on Grady’s left. “If you’re here tonight to threaten me some more, Sheriff, I’m not in the mood to dance.”
After her mother’s heart-to-heart earlier, Ronnie wanted to float around in a tipsy haze for the rest of the night and that was it. She’d face the fact that she was responsible for her own fuck-ups in the sober light of day tomorrow.
“Harassment from me?” Grady crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re the one who just drove poor Louie off in tears. What did you say that made a three hundred and fifty pound miner bawl like that?”
Her cheeks warmed. “It was an accident.”
“An accident?” he grinned. “I’d hate to see what you could do to a man on purpose.”
“Is that a challenge?”
His gaze slid down over her tank top, jeans, and boots. “No.”
The heat in his eyes said the opposite.
Emboldened by the gin, she sauntered over to him, circling, admiring his ridges, bulges, and lines up close. He grunted when she tapped his thigh with the butt of her pool stick, but held still for the rest of her inspection. Nice and brawny with broad shoulders. Not too many donuts judging by his waistline. She sniffed at his neck, showing her approval of his aftershave with a brief wiggle of her eyebrows. He needed to shuck the badge more often.
“Good answer, Sheriff.” She turned her back on him and bent over to line up her next shot. “I’m not sure you could handle me when you’re not hiding behind that tin star.” She hit the cue ba
ll hard, ricocheting it off the bumper into two striped balls, which rolled into opposite corner pockets. “I am a Morgan sister, after all. We’re nothing but trouble.”
He came up behind her as she was chalking the tip of her pool stick, leaning down so that his breath warmed her ear. She tried to hide her shiver of attraction. This was Sheriff Hardass brushing up against her backside. She needed to keep her head on her shoulders and not let this game she was playing get out of control. Besides, he was probably trying to knock her off her guard before he dropped his bomb about him knowing all about the stolen pocket watch.
“I could handle you, Veronica, with or without handcuffs—your preference.” His deep voice held either a promise or threat. She couldn’t tell which and itched to turn around and find out.
Instead she stepped away, rounding the pool table to take another shot while putting some much needed distance and a solid table between them. “What did I do tonight to deserve your special attention, Sheriff?”
“Nothing.”
She aimed to hit the six ball into a side pocket. “So you came here to mess with me for fun then?” Was this part of his plan for getting her to give up the truth? Follow her around until she caved?
She tried to keep her hands steady, not wanting him to see how much he was making her sweat and shake. She wished she’d grabbed that copy of the article Claire had wadded up and thrown behind the bar and tucked it safely away. As unlikely as the chances were of him finding it, the way her luck was running, he would.
“You have nothing to do with the reason I’m here.”
“Then why are you standing there watching me?” The six ball missed the side pocket and rolled back into the center of the table. Darn.
“I have a question for you.”
Her heart fled to her toes and pumped out SOSs in fast motion. “Oh, yeah?” She grabbed the blue chalk and rubbed it on her cue tip, trying to act cool and relaxed. She was a cucumber, an ice cube, a penguin … were penguins actually cool? Or did they just live where it was cool? She held his gaze, steady. “Is it personal?”
“Yes, it is.” He came around the pool table as she lined up her next shot and leaned on the edge of the table close to her, the seam of his jeans only a forearm twitch away.
Her mouth felt like she had eaten a bowl of sand pudding. She put her energy into focusing on her shot, not his hip, thigh, or groin, which were all right there for her to admire. Her shot went wide, the twelve ball hitting the edge of the corner pocket and bouncing off. He was screwing with her concentration, and the flirty look in his eyes when she stood upright confirmed it.
She glanced at his Adam’s apple, wondering if he would like it if she licked the skin covering it. A hot bolt of lust tore through her. She placed a hand on the edge of the pool table to steady herself. The thought of tasting his skin left her gulping.
Holy hell, she really needed to lay off the gin when Grady was around.
Get ahold of yourself, Ronnie. A voice sounding way too much like her mother’s said in her head, tossing her libido out the front door onto the porch and locking the deadbolt behind it. If he asks you about the watch, you are going to have to play dumb.
“What’s your question?” she asked.
“Did you have sex with a lot of men—other than your husband—before you were married?”
Ronnie gasped. Had she heard that right? “What?” She cocked her head to the side, trying to figure out his angle. “Are you trying to add ‘prostitution’ to my list of crimes, Sheriff?”
“No. Wait.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders. “That didn’t come out right.”
“No, it sure didn’t. You want to try again?”
His brow wrinkled. “Did you ever go through a period in your life when you acted a little uninhibited?” His gaze darted toward the jukebox. His body language, which usually broadcasted authority and control, showed his discomfort clear as the desert sky. Then he looked back, his focus lowering to her chest for too long to be misconstrued as anything other than interest, before lifting above her chin. “Like you are right now with me.”
She laughed. It came out sounding a lot sultrier than she had meant it to and blamed him for it. He needed to quit sending her mixed messages, especially while alcohol was polluting her bloodstream. “You think I’m acting uninhibited tonight for your benefit?”
One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “Aren’t you?”
“Nope. I was minding my own business trying to play a game of pool when you came along.”
“You keep bending over in front of me.”
“I can’t shoot standing upright, now can I?”
“You have to realize I can see down your shirt when you shoot opposite me.”
Actually, she had been too distracted by him to think about her cleavage. “I assure you that flashing my breasts at you was the farthest thing from my mind while I was shooting pool.” She placed her palm over her chest. “Besides, I have a bra on.” It was not like her boobs were hanging out for a National Geographic cameraman to capture on film.
“I know. It’s white satin with a lace edge that has a little orange flower in the center where it clasps.”
She pulled open her neckline and checked. The son of a bitch was spot on. Her face was hot when she frowned at him. “Shame on you for looking that closely.”
Amusement danced behind his amber eyes. “Contrary to what you may think of me, Veronica, I’m made of flesh and blood.”
“Yes, well contrary to what you may think of me, Sheriff Harrison, I am not an uninhibited sort of girl.” She stepped closer to where he leaned against the table, facing him eye-to-eye. “And while we’re discussing me and my bra, let me make it clear that I am not promiscuous or wanton or easy either.” She did have some pride left after all of the interrogations, damn it.
His eyes crinkled at the corner. “I’m glad to hear it. But you do hang out at this bar a lot, so you’ll have to forgive me for my confusion.”
Was he having her watched? “My sister works here.”
“Right. Your sister.”
She lifted her chin. “You know she does, Grady. I come here to keep Katie company while she works, certainly not for the men.”
“So the clothes you choose to wear here have nothing to do with snaring anyone’s attention?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the clothes I wear.”
A pair of vertical lines divided his eyebrows. “Are you actually going to stand here and tell me that you don’t realize how you look in that tank top and those jeans?”
He had no idea how soured she had been on men since her world had fallen apart. “I wore the jeans because they were clean, and I chose this shirt because it’s always hot and humid in here by the end of the night.”
“Yes.” He traced the strip of cotton fabric that rounded over Ronnie’s shoulder. “It is very hot.”
A lightbulb flashed on in her head. She cocked her head to the side. “Is all of this your way of asking me to sleep with you, Sheriff?”
He laughed low and husky. “No, Veronica. You are the last person in this county who I should get involved with.”
Was he trying to convince her of that? Or himself? She planted her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “Then what’s with the questions about being uninhibited and my clothing choices?”
“Hell. I’m going about this all wrong.” He plowed his fingers through his dark, wavy hair. “I knew I wasn’t the man for this job.”
“What job? Trying to find prostitutes at the local bar?”
His gaze held hers. “Let’s get something straight between us. I suspect you are many things, Veronica Morgan, but you are no prostitute. Just because I thought you were being uninhibited tonight does not mean I believe you sell your body for sex.”
Good to know where he stood on the subject of her livelihood. “My records state that clearly, do they?”
“They don’t need to.”
“You haven’t seen the home videos
then, I take it.” Her bitterness seeped into her tone. It always did when she cut through the layers of humiliation.
“Home videos of what?”
“Never mind.” She sat next to him on the table edge, shoulder to shoulder. “Grady, why are you here asking me about my sex life if you don’t want anything to do with it?”
“I never said that, Veronica.” He leaned closer, his shoulder actually touching hers. “I came looking for my niece,” he said for her ears only.
“Mindy Lou?” Ronnie asked.
He nodded. “Ever since her fiancé told her she was too fat for him and then left her for another woman, she keeps searching for her self-confidence in strangers’ beds. My brother’s wife begged me to come here tonight and try to talk some sense into her.”
“Your sister-in-law sent you to help with this?” That made Ronnie grin and then laugh.
“Yeah. Why is that so funny?”
“You’re like a robot when it comes to emotions.”
His eyes grew steely. “I’m not a robot, Veronica. I just don’t wear my emotions on my sleeve like you.”
She shrugged off his observation. “For that reason, Grady, I try not to wear sleeves. And I wish you’d stop calling me Veronica.”
“It’s a nice name.”
“I like Ronnie better.” Although, she did enjoy the sound of her real name when it rolled off his tongue. “You’re probably not going to be able to help Mindy Lou.”
“Why not?”
“She needs to feel like she’s attractive, and she’s searching for that confirmation from a man who isn’t related to her.” Like the pawn shop dude and Jess’s dad. “Her uncle telling her she’s pretty isn’t gonna cut it.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so.”
He drilled her with his gaze. “From experience?”
“Something like that.” She pushed away from the table and rounded to the opposite side, bending over to line up the fourteen ball in the pocket under Grady’s very nice ass.